The Government’s focus on significantly lifting New Zealand’s workplace health and safety record is behind the establishment of a new, stand-alone agency, says Labour Minister Simon Bridges.

The creation of a stand-alone Crown agent was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy.

“The new agency will have a dedicated focus on health and safety and underlines the Government’s strong commitment to addressing New Zealand’s workplace fatality and serious injury rates,” says Mr Bridges.

“We have a firm target of a 25 per cent reduction of these rates by 2020.

This was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission, and you expect the Government to implement all the recommendations unless there is a very good reason not to. The Pike River tragedy is a good example of what happens when there is an inadequate focus on health and safety.

Of course no workplace can be made free from risk, and nor should it be. Health and safety is always a balancing act. Otherwise we would engineer cars to not drive faster than 30 km/hr.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 at 12:00 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
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I’ve been looking for some benefit in having Bridges in parliament, and so far I’ve seen very little. A bill that increased penalties for cruelty to animals and some shuffling about on climate change countered by a welcome vote against the extreme left Louisa Wall’s redefinition of marriage bill. So he’s not as progressive as too many of his colleagues.

But a one time Tauranga lawyer directing NZ’s industrial sector in matters of Health and Safety? Where does his CV qualify him for this role?

There are already too many regulations in this area, Such regulation is a growth industry that is fast strangling growth in every other industry.

Pike River didn’t need more regulation. If there was any failure there outside the management, it was a failure to enforce existing regulations.

NZ industry needs skilled input from specialists, not more of the failed culture of Wellington bureaucracy.

A really easy way to eliminate industrial accidents would be to eliminate all industry, get rid of all the dangerous occupations and employ everybody in the Public Service as paper shufflers and rubber stampers.

This will help in the former goal by making so many rules, regulations, training requirements etc that it will be impossible to economically operate dangerous machines like lathes and press breaks

“Health and Safety”:
* a long-running joke among anyone with a shred of common sense.
* a tool for parasites of all kinds to extort businesses.
* an excuse for an indolent worker to keep their seat warm. “Can’t do that sorry. Health and safety.”

you expect the Government to implement all the recommendations unless there is a very good reason not to

At a slight tangent to coal-mines and the like, but still relevant. I suspect that not many know that the Department of Labour presently has officials (labelled “Health and Safety Inspectors”) visiting lifestyle blocks inquiring about the use of quad-bikes on such properties. Under the guise of discussing safety practices and offering helpful advice and written materials on quad-bike safety, they find our about your own habits when using a quad-bike for hobby farming purposes.

Be warned – it’s a form of official entrapment. If you acknowledge in the supposedly-friendly conversation that you’re not doing everything totally kosher (e.g. not “following the manufacturer’s instructions” by failing to wear a safety helmet on every occasion of quad-bike use) you then get told verbally that you will receive a written warning under the Health & Safety in Employment Act. That Act, as we have now discovered, contains a section (s. 17) that binds the self-employed in the same way as it would impact on an employer.

A short time later the official warning letter arrives – by registered mail, of course. It has the effect of giving a “prior warning” that is a pre-requisite under the Act before an infringement notice may be issued (even though an inspector has never even seen you riding a quad-bike!). All this happens simply because you were dumb enough to allow into your home Health & Safety Inspectors who came knocking on your door; and even dumber in answering truthfully targeted questions that were concealed within a seemingly-informal 35-minute conversation. No reading of one’s rights that even a criminal could expect, no honest outlining of the real reasons for the visit by the Gummint, just a raw and deceitful exercise of official power.

We were naive in allowing any Government official onto our property without a warrant or a detailed written explanation of the purposes and possible ramifications of the visit. It won’t happen again.

In our household we have never treated public servants as anything other than people trying to do their job. This bitter experience has changed all that – in future they will have to earn our co-operation. Sad but necessary in this age when governments and major political parties pay only lip service to ideals of individual freedom.

A final point. As most here might expect, this official little interrogation and entrapment exercise was not being carried out at minimal taxpayer expense. It took two public servants rather than one to pay us the friendly visit. A leopard’s spots never change.

Thanks for that story CG. Such a disgusting intrusion and act of deception.

There will be some pasty faced recently educated graduate sitting behind some desk in Wellington who has dreamed up this outrageous scheme.

He will have a staff of like clueless half educated socialist mungbeans working under him, and they will all be imbued with the same superior air and projecting the same message- You’re a stupid citizen, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,”.

And this scheme will have been signed off by whoever is the relevant Minister in the National Party, for these clueless and spineless morons in National don’t give a damn for such things as concern you and I, our freedoms as individuals and property owners, and those Ministers are there merely to do the bidding of the odious little half educated socialist swines filling most government admin roles these days.

Things have to change, and the only way they will change is if we have a political pressure group here that is similar to the Tea Party in the US, and works at getting rid of the cowards and backsliders and betrayers in National and replacing them with politicians who will take a stand against this kind of fascist intrusion. There is no other way out of this mess.

Simon showed quite a bit of skill over the the WOF changes so let us see how this change goes down. This should be easy as it is a recommendation of the Royal Commission. I assume there will be some staff disruption so Simon will have that to deal with that. I assume with more skill than Hekia Parata.

RB: I doubt very much that “this scheme will have been signed off by whoever is the relevant Minister …..”. I don’t believe that a Minister of the Crown’s express authorisation would be required for this level of departmental operation. The nearest the Minister got to it, I suspect, might have been a general briefing about on-farm safety during which the bureaucrats gave their Minister a generalised feel-good plan to implement a programme of safety reminders. I would be amazed, though, if the modus operandi on private land, at least as it was used in our case, was ever intimated to the Minister.

But here’s another concern. If we were now to go to that Minister (Simon Bridges, but the same with any other Minister) making a complaint about the behaviour of his departmental staff, I would wager that our complaint would soon become known to the actual perpetrators of this pernicious Big Brother scheme. From that moment, our little hobby farm would come under regular external surveillance until a spiteful Health and Safety Inspector could find contrived cause to issue the infringement notice that we so clearly deserve.

As you portray accurately, RB, the tenor of the official intervention would be: “You’re a stupid citizen, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.” No thanks.